Horace Campbell is Professor of African American Studies and Political Science at Syracuse University. His recent book is Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya. He is author of: Rasta and Resistance From Marcus Garvey to Walter Rodney; Reclaiming Zimbabwe: The Exhaustion of the Patriarchal Model of Liberation; Pan Africanism, Pan Africanists and African Liberation in the 21st Century; and Barack Obama and 21st Century Politics. Follow on Twitter @Horace_Campbell.

Thursday, February 7, 2013

The Wisconsin recall vote: Another wakeup call for the left in the United States of America

June 7, 2012

On Tuesday June 5 there was a recall election to remove
Scott Walker, the Republican governor of the State of Wisconsin. Walker had won
the elections as governor in November 2010 when a racist populist formation
called the Tea Party mobilized millions to oppose the ideas of a new
multi-racial USA based on social and economic justice. Within a few weeks after
becoming the governor, Scott Walker exposed the deep conservatism of this Tea
Party movement with attacks on the conditions of working peoples through what
was termed ’austerity ’measures, which meant cutting back on the rights of
workers. When the real target of these measures were revealed to be an outright
assault on the democratic rights of working peoples, especially the right to
collective bargaining by unionized state employees, there was open rebellion.
This rebellion took inspiration from the uprisings in Egypt and brought
international attention to the working peoples struggles in the United States.

There were many paths before the workers in how to respond to the program of
the governor. Out of these possible paths, continuous worker education drives,
general strike, continuous protests, building multi-racial alliances, opposing
privatization, organizing across the USA for a new system, the leaders of this
movement choose the path of pushing for a recall election. This push required
540,208 signatures and by January 2012 the movement for recall had garnered
close to 1 million signatures. We will argue this week that the very nature of
the campaign to focus on elections acted as a tool for the demobilization of
the working poor in Wisconsin and placed the struggle on the terrain that would
favor the monied classes in this recall.

The opponent of Scott Walker for the Democratic Party was the Mayor of
Milwaukee, Tom Barrett. Barrett is the mayor of a city with over 50 per cent
unemployment among peoples of African descent. The policies of Barrett were not
fundamentally different from Scott Walker and pointed to the reality that the
official Democratic Party in the USA does not have any new ideas of how to
challenge the billionaires in the midst of the capitalist depression. The media
and President Obama have cried that Scott Walker out-spent Tom Barrett eight to
one, spending US $45.9 million in this recall election. However, while this
focus on money is one indication of the corruption of the electoral system in
the United States, the more profound question lies in the task of building a
new movement for the poor and oppressed in the midst of this prolonged crisis
of capitalism. The vote was another wake up call for those who want social
justice. Last week we were alerted in Egypt to the fact that the electoral
process was rigged against real and fundamental changes. This week, the
Wisconsin recall vote acted as another teaching moment to alert progressives
internationally that while elections can be a platform for struggles, this
cannot be the only platform.

WISCONSIN AND THE HISTORY OF STRUGGLES IN THE US

Wisconsin is a medium-size midwestern state in the United States with a
population of 5.7 million persons. This was the land of differing native
peoples whose land was occupied and settled by colonizers who made this
territory a state of the United States in 1848. It is a state with a rich
history. This is a history of populism and labor activism and at the same time
the state that produced the infamous Senator Joseph McCarthy, the Cold War
demagogue. Currently, the House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan is the flag
bearer for conservatism from this state at the national level and the
chairperson of the Republican Party, Reince Priebus, comes from this state. The
history of dispossession of the First Nation Peoples stands as a permanent
statement against the idea of ‘progressivism’ that has been registered as part
of the history of this state.

Yet, in many respects this state can be distinguished from others by the long
traditions of the trade union militancy since the 19th century. Worker protests
and unionization had registered in this state over the past one hundred years
and in the period of deindustrialization, the most militant section of the
working class has been the public sector unions, that is, those employed as
teachers, police officers, firefighters and state employees. During the height
of the industrialization of the United States, there were numerous trade unions
in Wisconsin in the building trades, construction, logging, steel, brewing and
in the auto industry. In this period Wisconsin was at the top of those states
with unionized workers with over 25 per cent of the working class unionized.
This level of working class organization registered a decent standard of living
for worker.

However, over the past thirty years there have been constant attacks against
workers and other oppressed groups. From the period that Ronald Reagan launched
the attack against air control operators in the PATCO strike in the early
eighties, the trade union movement in the USA had been challenged. Bill
Fletcher in the Book, ‘Solidarity Divided: The Crisis of Organized Labor and a
New Path toward Social Justice’, had identified the limitations of the old
forms of trade union organizing, especially with the major demographic changes
in the US population. Neither the left nor the traditional trade union centers
are prepared to analyze the history of whiteness and the chokehold over the
working classes in the United States. Conservatives have not been shy to
exploit this division among the working peoples of the United States and the
populist racism of the Tea Party was one wake up call for the white left.
Instead of calling out the racism of the Tea Party, the white left tiptoed
around the clear racist propaganda and tactics of this wedge among working
peoples.

Scott Walker was elected governor in the wave of racism that had gained
momentum from sections of the population that argued that Barack Obama was not
a US citizen. These were called Birthers. It was a movement supported by
billionaires such as the Koch brothers who were taken aback by the multi-racial
alliance that had elected Barack Obama. The Democratic Party never rose to the
challenge and in fact played around with the conservatism of this movement
until the Congressional elections of November 2010 placed the Tea Party
representatives in key positions across the country. In states such as Indiana,
Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida there were legislators and governors who
set out to roll back the rights of workers and the rights of the poor. In every
one of these states the attack on the poor and black came before the attack on
the organized workers. The neo-liberal ideas about the privatization of
education, the privatization of prisons and roiling back entitlements of the
poor were supported by a servile media that wanted to demobilize the working
peoples. There was no sector of the society that escaped the heightened racism.
Probably the sector that was most affected by this racism was the youth. Police
brutality, stop and search, the stigmatization of youths of color and the open
racist ideas came in the period of tea Party insurgency. The killing of Trayvon
Martin was only one public indication of the new wave of racism when Barack
Obama was the president.

Governor Scott Walker entered office in January 2011 and within one month he
placed legislation before the legislature to roll back the rights to collective
bargaining by public sector employees. Prior to his election in 2010 tens of
thousands of voters had turned out in 2008 to vote for a new direction in US
politics, but after the election there were no forces to keep this population
mobilized. Into this vacuum stepped Walker and other Tea Party governors across
the United States. These state leaders gave subsidies to ‘investors’ while
passing legislation to take away the democratic rights of workers. In Michigan,
there was no governor who even wanted to take away the right to vote.

Scott Walker was among the boldest of these new Tea Party leaders and he
proposed legislation to drastically cut the social wage of workers. The
legislative agenda of Scott Walker was justified under the need for ‘austerity’
in the midst of the capitalist depression. While supporting the bail out of
over US $1 billion to the banks and financiers who supported his campaign,
Governor Walker proposed a bill where public sector workers would face an
average cut in income of 7% through reductions to their pensions and health
care. The bill would abolish collective bargaining rights for public sector
workers over anything other than pay. Pay increases would be capped to the rise
in the Consumer Price Index, so public sector workers could only bargain
against pay cuts and not for pay raises.

Immediately, worker protests erupted in Wisconsin. Drawing inspiration from the
Egyptian uprisings, the public sector workers occupied the state capital and
dramatically signaled a new stage in the struggles for social justice in the
United States. This occupation was beamed around the world as tens of thousands
of workers came out in the Wisconsin cold to oppose Scott Walker. The most
promising aspect of this opposition by the workers was the fact that the coercive
sectors of the state, police and fire fighters, supported the strike. Teachers,
students and university staff across the country came out in full force and the
teaching assistants at the University of Wisconsin built the web platforms to
internationalize the struggles.

DEMOCRATIZATION AND RECALL

From the outset of the Wisconsin struggles, the national leadership of the
Democratic Party was alarmed by the radicalization of the workers. There were
other forms of protests across the nation and by September the control of
public spaces by workers and their sympathizers had grown into the Occupy Wall
Street Movement. This Occupy Movement built on the forms of mobilization of
people in public spaces and inspired a new level of consciousness in the United
States about the domination of the society by the oligarchy in identifying them
as the one per cent. Economists such as Joseph Stiglitz who had served the
neo-liberal agenda of Bill Clinton joined in the opposition to big capital and
wrote long articles on this one per cent, “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%.” http://www.vanityfair.com/society/features/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105

Stiglitz joined a discourse on ‘inequality’ as one aspect of the liberal agenda
to weaken the understanding of the importance of class struggles in the
capitalist crisis. Michael Moore had made an important intervention in the
making of the documentary, Capitalism: A Live Story. In this documentary, Moore
had called for the arrest and imprisonment of the bankers. Workers across the
Uniuted States were caught between two messages, one of inequality and the
other of class struggle. It was from the oppressed Africans and radical
environmentalists where there was a more robust call for a new system. The
media worked overtime to discredit the radical ideas to respond tom the crisis.
It was the work of big capital to support the Scott Walker initiatives while
seeming to be on the side of the workers. The choices before the working people
were stark, there was either going to be a prolonged struggle or the
capitalists and their representatives would impose austerity measures to weaken
the working classes.

GENERAL STRIKE OR RECALL

The intellectual climate set by the media and the official Democratic Party
minimized the importance of measures such as occultation, general strikes or
prolonged periods of worker education as to the real depth of the crisis of
capitalism. In Wisconsin, there was a debate on whether there should be a
general strike by the workers. This discussion of the general strike had gained
momentum in the face of the clear strategy of Scott Walker to destroy public
sector workers and their capacity for organizing. If the leaders of the AFL-CIO
and the state workers union AFSCME had read the book of Bill Fletcher, they
would have been better prepared to understand that there had to be new tactics
to oppose Walker and the anti-worker sentiments sweeping the society. Instead
these trade union leaders offered compromise after compromise. They offered to
implement all the cuts demanded by Walker, provided he maintained the automatic
dues check-off, the source of their own salaries, and preserved a role for them
in negotiating the reductions in the income and benefits of their members.

The Democratic Party and the Union Bureaucracy were aghast at the discussions
on the general strike and focused attention on garnering signatures for a
recall of Governor Scott Walker. While there was some education involved in the
process of gathering the more than one million signatures for this recall, the
process itself limited the scope for cascading activities by workers and boxed
the movement into an electoral struggle.

This demobilization through elections was deepened when the Democratic Party
chose Tom Barrett as the candidate to oppose Scott Walker. Barrett is the mayor
of Milwaukee, the largest urban center in the state and had stood in the
election in 2010 against Walker. The fact that the Democratic Party and the
trade union bureaucracy decided to go with Barrett was one more indication of
how far removed the top brass of the party were from the concerns of the poor.
Milwaukee had gained national notoriety for the oppression of poor blacks. The
school system in Milwaukee is among the most racist in the nation and the rate
of unemployment among blacks is as high as 50 per cent. Police brutality and
the rates of incarceration among blacks and Latinos would have indicated that
there would be no enthusiasm among the poor for the Governorship of Tom
Barrett. Moreover, the same austerity that was being promoted at the state
level by Scott Walker was being discussed in the back rooms at City hall by Tom
Barrett. His nomination was a sure sign that there would be no massive ground
operation in the black and brown communities.

THE RECALL RESULTS

Within one hour of the closing of the polls on June 5, it was clear that the
Democratic Party and the trade union leadership had miscalculated. Scot Walker
won the recall election with 53.1 per cent of the votes. Barrett received 46
per cent of the votes. This was the same margin that Walker had defeated
Barrett in the 2010 elections.

Immediately when the results were declared the trade union leaders and the
Democratic Party decried the role of big money in elections in the United
States. The New York Times reported that Walker had spent over US $45 million
with 70 per cent of the funds coming from outside of Wisconsin. The
‘progressives’ continue to point to the role of the Supreme Court Judgment on
Citizens United to decry the role of billionaires in financing elections.
Others in the media called the Wisconsin elections a dry run for the
presidential elections in November between Romney and Obama.

Progressive forces across the United States are debating the elections and it
is from the ranks of those who call themselves socialists where there is the
most sophisticated analysis. Even this analysis from socialist elements
excludes the role of Barrett and his relationship to Black people in Milwaukee.
The recall election serves as a wakeup call for progressives. The future of the
struggles against capitalism cannot be decided by electoral struggles.
Electoral struggles are one of the many forms of mobilization, but with the
billions of dollars available from the monied classes to mobilize the media, it
will be necessary to clarify new forms of struggles that will ensure the steady
and continuous mobilization of the working class. At the time of the Civil War
in the United States Karl Marx had noted that’ labor cannot emancipate itself
in the white skin when in the black it is branded.’ Today, public sector
workers cannot gain democratic rights when these are the social forces at the
forefront of the prison industrial complex. The struggles against capitalism
will be heightened by this recall defeat. Barack Obama and the Democratic Party
cannot decry the power of the monied classes when the policies of the present
government have been to bail out the banks and the monied classes. These forces
are using the bail out money to consolidate political power in the United
States.

I will agree with those progressive forces who noted that the grassroots worked
for Barack Obama in 2008. In 2012, the progressive and grassroots have to
fashion new tools to work for themselves to defeat Romney and the Republicans.
The grassroots must build structures that are stronger than the money and the
media. In the process of building these structures they will be able to hold
any politician accountable. The Wisconsin Recall election is an eye opener
about the present balance of forces. The left will have to decide if they are
equal to the challenge.